


Paying Debts

by icarus_chained



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Explicit Language, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Loyalty, Mercenaries, Post-Season/Series 07, Post-Season/Series 07 Finale, Spoilers, complicated feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 03:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12027129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: After the S7 Finale, Bronn follows Jaime north, and only belatedly wonders what the flying fuck he thinks he's doing, aside from probably getting killed. What the fuck is it about Lannisters anyway? Both of them, Jaime and his bloody brother.





	Paying Debts

**Author's Note:**

> I should clarify before I start that I've been watching this show piecemeal in clips over the past four days, so my knowledge of it is extremely scattered. Also, I have no idea where you set the dial for cursing with these people. I may have overshot. Then again, this is Bronn, so maybe not? **Spoilers** for S7, or the bits of it I've seen.

The dragon queen didn't kill them. Neither did the Starks. It was a near fucking thing, on both counts, particularly since Jaime fucking Lannister didn't appear to have a single bone of self-preservation in his entire fucking body when it came to dragons, women, or dragon bloody women. For fuck's sake. There were moments to bald-facedly own up to murdering a woman's father and not being sorry about it, and in the middle of trying to explain why your bitch fucking cunt of a sister was trying to fuck everyone over was _not fucking it_.

For a minute there, Bronn would swear Tyrion Lannister had been about to gnaw his own hand off in sheer fucking exasperation at his brother's idiocy, and Bronn had been more than halfway to fucking joining him. Should have left the bloody idiot in the bloody fucking river, shouldn't he? Or at least tactfully broken off and left him to handle the royalty on his own.

But! But. Fortunately for everybody, and Bronn in particular, they had a grand old army of the dead come marching south to provide a nice big bigger problem for everybody to worry about, and the dopey bloody cunt _had_ remembered either manners or sanity somewhere in the middle there and managed to soothe everybody over enough not to get fried in the middle of the Winterfell fucking banquet hall. Which was nice. The not getting fried part, not the banquet hall. Gloomy bloody place, the North. 'Bout to get gloomier, too.

So that was that, then. They'd come north, Jaime and him, sans army, sans alliance, sans-any-bloody-thing-at-all, and while it hadn't exactly gone swimmingly they also weren't dead. Yet. So that was all right then, wasn't it.

... Why the _fuck_ did he keep doing this shit? No, for real now. What the fuck had he been thinking?

He'd said dragons were where he'd draw the line. He'd _said_ that. He'd entirely fucking meant it, as well. And if dragons were a step too far, then armies of the fucking dead and the end of the bloody fucking world was sure as seven _hells_ too far. There was no profit here. There was no bloody anything here, except for death as far as the bloody eye could see, and why the _hell_ , why the bloody fucking hell, had Bronn decided to follow an idiot bloody Lannister all the way up here to die with his cock frozen off in the bloody fucking cold? For _fuck's sake_.

He'd taken leave of his senses, was what he'd done. Clearly. Somewhere along the line he'd taken leave of his fucking senses, and somehow managed to miss it until he'd landed his arse here with no way fucking out again. And he knew just who to blame that on, too.

Lannister. Well. Lannister _s_ , really. Two of 'em. The brothers, the cripple and the dwarf. Both of 'em here, both of 'em trying to get themselves bloody killed and everyone else along with 'em, both of 'em with that same bloody sad, determined expression about it. Both of 'em with their debts, and their battered, dented, knock-off bloody honour, and their promises to women who'd kill them as soon as look at them, let alone fuck them. Fucking hell. The dwarf and his queen, the cripple and his knight. Look how _that_ was going so far. 

Though he'd give Jaime the better odds of the two, at the minute. The older brother had finally managed to _escape_ his crazy bitch of a queen. Admittedly, to the arse end of nowhere and the end of the fucking world, but still. He was doin' all right, that one. He wasn't dead yet, and the Maid of fucking Tarth hadn't been looking at him at all coldly earlier. Bloody bastard. Should have known he'd manage to get some, even here, even at the end of the world and with nothing left to his bloody name. Some buggers had all the bloody luck. 

And in the end, he supposed, he wasn't all that surprised it wasn't Tyrion. _There_ was a bugger with no bloody luck whatsoever.

Actually, when it came to it, Bronn wasn't sure how he felt about seeing the sneaky little fucker again. They hadn't exactly parted on the best of terms, what with the death sentence and all. Not that Tyrion seemed to be holding a grudge or anything, but then Tyrion never fucking did, did he? The man was well versed in the practicalities of the world. Well _resigned_. That should have made things easier, made things nice and handy for the both of them. It just ... It didn't. Not exactly. And fucked if Bronn knew why.

_It's good to see you again_ , the man had said. Marching to his death, _again_ , Bronn cheerfully and happily explaining how he'd leave him to it when the time came. It's good to fucking see you again, and the fucker had fucking meant it and all. What the fuck was that, eh? What kind of fucking idiot said shit like that and meant it?

Well. A Lannister fucking idiot, clearly. One of a pair. Jaime would sort himself out, though, from here on out. He'd get killed or he wouldn't, he'd bed the Beauty or he wouldn't. There wasn't one whole hell of a lot Bronn could do about it either way. He'd jumped in front of a fucking dragon for the man, he'd gotten the dopey cunt up here to the frozen arse end of nowhere in one piece, and they were all fucking dead by the end of this anyway, so Jaime bloody Lannister could sort his own bloody self out from here. Dragons were the end of it, Bronn had said, and dragons could fucking _be_ the end of it and all.

Tyrion, though. Tyrion Bronn needed to think about a bit.

Some of it was survival, obviously. Tyrion was the Hand of the Dragon Queen. Two dragons, a huge fucking army, and an alliance with the King in the North, all of those were fairly convincing arguments in the lady's favour. Even if they were all currently pointed at the even bigger army of the fucking dead come roaring down from beyond the wall, and even if they might not turn out to be enough when it came to it. It wasn't like anybody else had any better options right now. As ridiculous as it was, sometimes the safest place to be was on the front lines, in the thickest bloody knot of fellow idiots you could find. Just this minute, Winterfell was the biggest, safest collection of idiots in the seven fucking kingdoms. So there was that. 

And then there was Tyrion. Then there was the man him-fucking-self.

The man paid his debts, was the thing. The man kept his promises. A standing offer, he'd said. Double what anyone else might pay. He said it when he was about to die, of course, he _always_ said it when he was about to die, but that didn't make it any less true when it came to it. He'd be good for it. Bugger always was. 

That wasn't why Bronn had trekked himself up here, though. Not the debt, not the promise. Not even Jaime bloody Lannister, though gods knew that idiot needed a minder if any idiot ever did. Face first into a fucking dragon, every fucking time. At least the younger brother tried to _talk_ to the dragon first. Wheedle the bastard around a bit, try not to get himself fried. And successfully too, by the looks of things. Hand of the fucking Queen, if you please, and there were rumours about the dragons themselves as well. All this, and the last time Bronn had seen him had been in a bloody cell. The fucker had no bloody luck at all, and still he managed to wind up on his feet. Every fucking time.

And that ... that might be part of it, Bronn thought. Why him. Why here, why now. Why Tyrion. The end of the world, the arse end of fucking nowhere, and here Bronn was anyway. Nothing in it for him, nothing promised that anyone was gonna be alive to collect at the end of it. Nothing here, not one fucking thing, and still he'd come. Here he fucking was.

Because whatever else might happen, whoever else might live or die, Tyrion fucking Lannister would find a way to land on his feet. Bronn believed that. He'd never believed in anything in his entire fucking life, and he believed that. The man had been under siege from the first moment Bronn had laid eyes on him. He'd been captured and threatened and beaten and almost killed, he'd been surrounded by enemies, he'd been bullied onto a battlefield without the first fucking clue what to do about it, he'd been sentenced to fucking death, he'd been exiled across the sea, he'd been who-the-fuck-knew what else, and at the end of it, at the end of fucking all of it, the bugger was _still fucking here_. And not even just here, but Hand of the fucking Queen on top of it. A _dangerous_ queen, Bronn would grant you, one as like to take his fucking head off for looking at her funny, but in the end wasn't that just more proof again? The little fucker was immortal. The whole fucking world couldn't kill him, and the whole fucking world was _trying_. Bronn wouldn't mind a bit of that. He wouldn't mind a bit of that at all.

And as well as that, on top of all of that, the little fucker actually liked him as well. Bronn. He liked Bronn of the bloody Blackwater, and he didn't need promises or loyalty to manage it. He didn't need anything at all, not one single thing Bronn couldn't remember how to give. Because he was a sad little fuck, admittedly, because he'd been beaten around the place so fucking much he'd take whatever he could fucking get, loyalty or no loyalty, but still. He'd said it was good to see Bronn again, and he'd fucking meant it and all.

That was an odd feeling for Bronn. That was almost ... He'd felt _bad_ about leaving the bastard to die that time. Not enough to change his mind, obviously, Gregor fucking Clegane was right up there with fucking dragons when it came to it, but ... still. He'd felt bad. And it hadn't gotten better over time. If anything, it'd gotten _worse_. Following Jaime fucking Lannister around the place, getting almost killed for him a time or twenty. Diving in front of a fucking _dragon_ for the man. He'd done it because he'd had to bloody do it, the fucker would have been dead fifty times over otherwise, but ...

He'd wondered, sometimes, if he should have done that for Tyrion too. He'd wanted to. Sort of. Some strange, twisty feeling in his chest, looking down at the little man across a table, across a battlefield, across a cell. That battered, sturdy, cynical little fucker, with gold always at the ready and death hovering perpetually at his shoulder. Ready to die, ready to be betrayed, lying through his teeth and fighting tooth and claw to make it through the day. It wasn't _loyalty_ , as such, the thing Bronn was feeling, he just wasn't built for that shit, but there'd been moments there when he'd wanted ...

When he'd wanted it not to come down to that. To loyalty, to choosing. When he'd wanted it not to come down to Tyrion or Bronn, because Bronn would always choose Bronn, and that meant leaving Tyrion to die. He'd not wanted that. He hadn't done anything to _change_ that, but he'd never wanted it either.

And now here they were again. Here _he_ was. Tyrion Lannister, back from the dead, wheedling his way out of trouble with all the world against him and the end of days upon them. Still alive, still fighting, still climbing his way up the ladder and offering a fistful of gold and certain death to pull people up it after him. Never asking more loyalty than the gold itself could buy him. Never asking anyone to choose him over themselves, or at least not more than once, and only when he was desperate. Never holding a grudge for it afterwards. Because he understood, because he knew what it was when it was every man for himself, and the only thing loyalty could buy you was an early grave.

Tyrion Lannister, looking at his bitch of a queen with love in his eyes, offering loyalty anyway.

He was an idiot. Tyrion. Always had been. He was as big of a fucking idiot as his brother, and just as likely to fucking die for it. Bronn reckoned he knew that. But he was an idiot with dragons, an army and a queen, an idiot with no luck at all and a knack for landing on his feet regardless, an idiot that the whole fucking world hadn't managed to kill yet. An idiot who might, just might, manage not to die of it, and an idiot who might manage that all by his lonesome as well, without Bronn necessarily having to lift a finger. An idiot Bronn could leave to die if he had to, and be happy to see again later, and know the idiot was happy too.

An idiot, weirdly, that Bronn didn't _want_ to leave to die. Because he was turning into a contrary bloody fucker in his old age, so he was.

It wasn't loyalty. This thing he felt, the thing in his chest when he looked at the squat, immortal little monster, shared a grin with him. It wasn't loyalty. It didn't count if you only gave it because you knew it wouldn't be needed later, when you knew the bastard could save himself without you no matter what anybody did to him. That didn't count. It wasn't loyalty. Bronn knew that.

It might be trust, though. Of a sort. It was definitely liking. And there were worse things to die of, when it came down to it.

It was the end of the world, Bronn thought. It was the end of the fucking world. And here he was, on the edge of it, right on the front lines, freezing his fucking bollocks off and thinking ... thinking maybe it might be worth it. Being here. Fighting this fight. Choosing this time, and this place, and this pair of idiot fucking Lannisters. The cripple and the dwarf. The one needing help to get out of bed safely in the morning, and the one you could safely toss off a cliff and still have a drink with later. Even if he died for it later, even if he made it to the end and _nobody fucking paid him for it_ , it might still be worth it.

There was still that standing offer, mind you. If the dwarf lived, there was still that standing offer. Probably not a castle, at this point, but he was Hand to the fucking Queen and sooner or later that had to be good for something, right? The last pair of halfway sane Lannisters in the entire fucking world, surely _one_ of 'em would pay their debt at the end of it?

Probably not. Probably wouldn't live that fucking long, either of 'em, or Bronn himself either.

Ah, hells with it anyway. At least he wouldn't die fucking bored.

**Author's Note:**

> I like Bronn. I have a fondness for pragmatic, borderline amoral assholes. Also Tyrion, because trickster. *shrugs sheepishly*


End file.
